Maurice G. Hindus

Maurice Gerschon Hindus (27 February 1891-8 July 1969) was a Russian-American writer, foreign correspondent, lecturer, and authority on Soviet and Central European affairs.

Biography
Maurice Gerschon Hindus was born into one of four Jewish families in the village of Bolshoye Bykovo in the Russian Empire (now in Belarus), the son of a kulak. In 1905, the family came to the United States, settling in New York City. He worked as a farmer for several years and attended Colgate and Harvard Universities. Hindus started his career as a freelance writer, publishing his first book, The Russian Peasant and the Revolution, in 1920. In 1922, he spent several months among Russian emigres and wrote several articles about them for Century Magazine. The magazine then sent him to Russia to study the farm life and system, writing Humanity Uprooted in 1929 and Red Bread in 1931. He was accused of being overly sympathetic or naive about the actual conditions of Soviet life during the 1920s and 1930s, and he would visit the USSR several times, staying three years during World War II. During the Cold War, Hindus was very critical of the Soviet government, although he always distinguished between the Kremlin and the Russian people.